01 November 2013

Two Grilled Fish (二匹のサンマ, 1967)

In 1967, the experimental animator Yōji Kuri remade his 1960 animated
short Two Grilled Fish (二匹のサンマ). This new version has the same basic plot as
the original film, which I described in an earlier post.
It also has the same overall theme of theme of well-intentioned people
with a desire to live in peace and harmony being thwarted by external forces
(politics, war, communities) beyond their control.

Stylistic Differences

The original film was shot in black
and white, but the 1967 version uses colour.
As is typical of Kuri, the colour is used sparingly. Some of the scenes, such as the idyll of the
couple’s island paradise before the invasion of technology and outsiders, more rendered
more eye-catching by this stylistic choice. The change in film stock also suggests that
Kuri had a higher budget for this film.

There are also differences in
character design. For the central
protagonists, the couple, these changes are only minor: they are now wearing hats and come to the island
without their dog and their chickens.
The most startling difference is to the character design of the
outsiders who invade in the island. In
the original version, it was an assorted mixture of men and women with no
identifiable nationality. In this second
version, the invaders are bearded men dressed and are very obviously an ethnic
Arab stereotype. The men invade the
island and use the scientist’s machine to produce women, with whom they pair
off and create babies who help them take over the island.

There was a lot of unrest in the
Middle East in the 1960s – the Six-Day War occurred in 1967, for example. I am not well versed enough on the Japanese
perspective on the Middle East at this time to speculate on what Kuri was
trying to say by using these characters but it makes for fascinating
viewing. Post-9/11 the image of a giant
rocket sticking out of a skyscraper seems chillingly prescient. It got me to wondering about what Kuri’s wartime
experiences were. I know from his official bio, that his father was a soldier and was absent for much of
his childhood years. He was also still
living in his home prefecture of Fukui when the terrible earthquake struck that
region in 1948. I imagine the average
person growing up in Japan in the 30s and 40s would be acutely aware of how
external forces can affect a person’s life irrevocably.

As for the animation itself, the
movements in the 1967 version of Two
Grilled Fish are smoother and the film has been more tightly edited. Some of the shots in the original version
lagged slightly. My intuition tells me
that the differences in editing can be mainly attributed to experience. In 1960, Kuri had only just begun to
experiment with animation as an artistic medium, but by 1967 he had at least
two dozen films under his belt. He also
had the assistance of his protégée Taku
Furukawa (Speed,
Jyōkyō
Monogatari) who had been under his mentorship since 1963 and would go on to
become one of Japan’s top independent animators in his own right.

The Soundtrack

Another significance difference between
the two versions of Two Grilled Fish
is the soundtrack. The original film featured
experimental sound designed by the avant-garde composer Kuniharu Akiyama with a narrated text by poet Shuntarō Tanikawa. Although
there is still a cutting edge element to this new soundtrack thanks to effects by
Hiroshi Yamazaki, who also
collaborated on Kuri’s films The Midnight
Parasites (1973), the film has a completely different feel to it because of
the addition of the pop song Sekai wa
Futari no Tame ni (世界は二人のために / The World was Made for Only the Two
of Us) sung by Naomi Sagara. It is a very catchy song, with the theme
matcheing perfectly to the animation. As
much as I like the poet Tanikawa, the narration in the first version did not
really add much to the interpretation of the film --- and in general I prefer
when animators use narration and dialogue sparingly. The lilting of Sekai wa Futari no Tame ni when it is reprised at the end reminded
me of Stanley Kubrick’s ironic use
of Vera Lynn’s “We’ll Meet Again” at
the end of Dr. Strangelove (1964).

Although it seems incongruent for
Kuri to use a pop song when most of his films use avant-garde soundtracks,
there is a subversive element to Naomi Sagara herself. Sekai wa
Futari no Tame ni wasSagara’s
first hit song and marked the beginning of her successful recording and TV
career. Her career peaked during the
1970s when she appeared more than a dozen times on the Kōhaku Uta Gassen – the popular
annual New Year’s Eve Special – an honour bestowed only on those who have “made
it”. She even hosted the programme five times
(1972, 1974-7). While this all indicates
that she was mainstream, Sagara was subversive because of her gender ambiguity. She has a deep singing voice which means she gets
mistaken for being a young man – and she also dressed (and continues to dress) in
a masculine way. She rejected the miniskirts
of the era in favour of suits and has always cut her hair short. Despite these obvious signals about her
sexuality, her lesbianism was a closely guarded secret until she was outed in
1980 by a bitter ex-girlfriend. This caused her to leave the spotlight for a long time. She apparently ran her family’s business for many years but is happily back in the spotlight
these days not only as a recording artist but as a dog expert (see her book!). I love her voice so I am a bit biased when I
say that the song adds greatly to the appeal of the film.

International Audience

I suspect that the key reason behind
much of the changes between the two versions of Two Grilled Fish has to do with the intended audience. In 1960, Kuri was just testing the waters
domestically with his unique brand of animation. By 1967 he had an international audience for
his works. Thus, the 1967 version has
English and French text instead of the Japanese of the original. This is not just in the opening credits but
also within the action of the film itself (ie the label on the entrance to the
Ministry of Defense in the war scenes).
With an international audience in mind, Kuri also made two versions of Au Fou! (殺人狂時代 / Satsujin
Kyōjidai)) – 1965 for the original and 1967 for the international version. Kuri made a splash on the international
festival scene in the early 1960s with his profile boosted significantly when
he won the Special
Jury Award at Annecy in 1963. This new
version of Two Grilled Fish won Kuri an
award at Oberhausen in 1968. He also won his second Noburo Ofuji Award at the Mainichi Concours in 1968 for
Two Grilled Fish and The Room (部屋/Heya,
1967).